Environmental issues

With the announcement in the Chancellor’s Spring budget that the landfill tax escalator will remain unchanged at £8 per year, landfill tax will reach the Government’s ceiling of £80 per tonne of waste in 2014/15. No surprise here, though the lack of an announcement on the future level of the tax after 2014/15 comes as a disappointment. The Local Government

Listening to the recent panel response on BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions, elicited a ray of hope that the public discussion surrounding energy-from-waste is becoming more sophisticated. The question was asked as to whether the proposed waste incinerator at Javelin Park in Gloucestershire was “a blot on the landscape or a necessary step towards an ecologically sustainable environment”. The panel

Councils and private sector waste management service providers are watching anxiously as the row over whether they should be compelled to collect recyclates separately will be tested in the Courts in late February. The Waste Directive says that Councils must introduce ‘separate’ collections for paper, metal, glass and plastics by 2015. The question is whether this literally means collecting these

Given the parlous state of the economy one would imagine there were more important things for the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) to worry about, but elevating the seemingly innocuous weekly bin collection to the exalted status of a “fundamental” (or “basic” or even “human”, depending on the passion of the moment) right has meant that the issue

Does it really require the intervention of Parliament, through its new Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012, for us to introduce more public services that provide a wider social benefit? As spending has been squeezed over the past few years I have witnessed just how much support from Local Government to the ‘third sector’ has been cut. If this trend

I had the pleasure of participating in the Chartered Institute of Waste Management’s annual conference in London recently and was very encouraged by the consensus of opinion about the future direction our industry should take. Everyone agreed that if the UK embraces the circular economy model, this would be the catalyst for behavioural change and would lead to tangible environmental

Watching Dirty Britain on ITV1 during the last couple of weeks really opens your eyes to Britain’s unsung heroes and another world of filth and grime which we – the public – generate, yet are often happy to ignore. What struck me was the professionalism and dedication of all those featured, especially those who carry out the most stomach-churning of

It’s now widely accepted that a sustainable future is only achievable if we change our ways from a ‘throw away’ culture to one which recognises and extracts the value from the resources we consume. When I look at the waste management industry, I see only the enormous potential it has to help the UK, particularly in terms of renewable energy.

For those who watched the new BBC series Toughest place to be a bin man, you could not escape the irony of the slogan proudly painted on the side of the Hammersmith and Fulham Council refuse collection vehicle. It stated, ‘Recycling is a duty not a choice’. Well yes, perhaps it is in the cosseted world of central London. However,

HMRC released figures last month showing that some 45 million tonnes of waste is still going into landfill. We should still be pleased that the UK has come a long way in recent years. 45 million tonnes is still a significant drop from the halcyon days of landfilling back in 1996 where almost double this amount was buried. However, if